Saturday, April 4, 2009

OMG

Today, I have a lot to say, and do not know where to begin.

So, it must start with this: Thank God for Jesus. A God who understands pain, injustice, betrayal, and abandonment. Thank God for a God with scars. Thank God that He's not a man (of course, maybe Ze is a better pronoun for this), or a woman and that Ze does not have a race or a political party. That Ze doesn't think like me, or you and that Ze thinks bigger than us...

That being said, my dad started a conversation about Rush Limbaugh and his summit for women which somehow ended up being about socialism. How special interest groups function under socialist ideologies and its all power grab

(which, true enough, it IS about power. But not about taking power away from anyone but instead, evening it out. Somehow, pointing out inequality is sexist). Somehow, we ended up discussing Thomas Paine and the constitution.

What is maddening as even as my dad claimed women were equal in society to men, he called feminists lesbians (where have we heard that before) and then, claimed that lesbians weren't REAL women. Then, he said that black people were the n word, and that gay men weren't real men either.

Then, he talked about how there discrimination no longer exists.

See, the thing is, special interest groups exist because of power. Or, lack thereof. Now that non white, non male folk have gained a voice, they're challenging the status quo, they get blasted. Or, get accused of reverse racism or sexism.

When a woman is paid as much as a man, can negotiate as aggressively as she needs to and still get the job, when being "feminine" is not an onus, when the first thing people hear when they hear black person is the n word, when the world is still so entrenched in this colonialist, ethnocentrism, America is not free. America is not equal.

My dad says we need to go back to the constitution, where God was in public life and our constitutional rights were upheld.

For one, what about the rights of the indigenous Americans?

For another, the constitutional rights only applied to rich white guys.

For another, the the founding fathers weren't all Christians. Many were deists who espoused the ideals from the enlightenment era: rationalism, empiricism, etc...

God was added into "public life" in the forties and fifties as a way to "protect" America from communism.

For another, Christianity as a system hasn't worked. And, in my opinion, as if the Way weren't hard enough, we married it to conservative politics that thought little of those marginalized by society. It's created more atheists than anything else, IMHO.

The point is, the system sucks. And always has. Don't get me wrong. I love my country. I just hate that we think we're Gods gift to civilization.